Imagine a contest in which a group of gifted directors stands around, trying to outdo each other by taking seriously the notion of making an intelligent, artistically ambitious, family-inviting film.

That’s what this season in movies has felt like at times. And audiences have been the beneficiaries of this “so you think you can make a bold entertainment” throwdown.

There’s Martin Scorese’s “Hugo,” in which the auteur of gangsters and ardent lover of cinema’s history weaves the stories of orphan Hugo Cabret and forgotten movie maverick Georges Méliès into an often stunning yarn.

Then there’s Michel Hazanavicius’ “The Artist,” which opens today. The effervescent charmer isn’t merely an homage to cinema’s silent era. It is a silent movie.

Christmas Day brings “War Horse,” Steven Spielberg’s second entry into the contest. ( His animated “The Adventures of Tintin” opened Wednesday.)

Robustly entertaining, “War Horse” brings to the big screen Michael Morpurgo’s 1982 children’s novel about a young man named Albert, his horse, Joey, and the war that separates them and rends Europe — the first World War.

Last summer, the Broadway play won five Tonys, including best play. Already a bona fide knockout when it came from London, it rendered audiences and critics awestruck with its magnificent puppet star.

Anticipating Spielberg’s upcoming film, New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley wrote in his rave, “But nothing on screen could replicate the specific thrill of watching Joey take on substance and soul, out of disparate artificial parts, before our eyes.”

True. Thankfully, trancendence comes in many forms. It must. The gobsmacking wonder of giant puppets tweaking the imagination will have to belong to the stage.

Thanks to a talented cast of humans and horses, and Spielberg’s sure hands on the reins, “War Horse” is a bold and beneficent ride that takes the measure of war while never losing sight of the abiding amity of human and horse.

Albert and Joey’s journey together is touching. Their time apart is harrowing, especially for Joey. Their friendship begins in unyielding farm country.

For reasons hardly rational (based in resentments wholly understandable), English farmer Ted Narracott bids on a horse his landlord wants. Ted needs a beast, not a beauty like Joey.

The hard-drinking farmer (Peter Mullan) wins the battle, but will likely lose the family farm to Lyons (David Thewlis).

Son Albert (newcomer Jeremy Irvine) promises to roughen their diamond.

Their friendship is cemented in a rock-strewn field. Their separation comes when Joey is drafted by the calvary.

Written for the screen by Lee Hall and Richard Curtis, “War Horse” is sweeping. It limns with visual grace the true and the sentimental.

War declared, Joey is taken from village to battlefield to French countryside to the war’s deadly, gas-fogged trenches. It is a deft and humane way of binding ally and enemy. But then, animals can do that.

Of the 1 million horses estimated to have been pressed into service in the war that did not end all wars, 62,000 survived.

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